TEENAGE MONSTER

US, 1958, 64 minutes, Black and white.
Anne Gwynne, Stuart Wade, Gloria Castillo, Gilbert Perkins.
Directed by Jacques R. Marquette.

The B Feature was a popular aspect of the double bills, especially in English-speaking countries. They were churned out by the American industry as well as by the British from the 1930s to the 1960s. The coming of television did not immediately halt their production or popularity but, at the beinning of the 1960s, with the big-budget widescreen films that were becoming more and more popular, there was little place for these films.

When the Americans began making telemovies in the late 1960s, these became the alternative to the B films.

However, there were still a number of film-makers who made genre pictures during the 1970s, often Z budget in production and imagination. Later, the successors of these films were the straight-to-video and straight-to-DVD films of the 1990s and into the 21st century.

In the United States, especially with the popular serials that took on themes of science and even space exploration, the 1950s saw a proliferation of short science fiction films, some of them now considered excellent examples of their type, others were just schlock.

One of the features of these films was the atomic age and many of the films were warnings about radiation dangers and the possibilities of mutations and monsters. Godzilla emerged from this period. Space also fascinated film-makers and audiences at this time. The first Sputnik was launched in 1957 and soon after the first astronauts went into space. The moon landing was in 1969. Many of the films (even Kubrick’s 1968 2001: a Space Odyssey) tried to imagine what space travel would be like. There was a huge spate of space films.

Unfortunately, special effects were quite limited at the time and many audiences would find these quite risible. However, taken in their time, they had their impact.

This was the period of Ed Wood and his Planet 9 from Outer Space but also the beginning of the career of Roger Corman and his many protégés who became top-class directors.

There had been a Hollywood tradition of horror since the 1930s which led to many spoofs. However, all kinds of horror made a comeback in the 1950s, not only in the shockers from the US but also from Hammer Studios in England. These films also continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s and influenced some of the poorer directors like Ted. V. Mikels with films like The Corpse Grinders. These films, along with the popularity of the blaxploitation films now show their age with their characteristic costumes and hair styles, the touch sometimes of the psychedelic and the grainy film stock.

Teenage Monster was filmed under the title Meteor Monster. It is one of many B-grade (Z-grade) science fiction films of 1958.

The film was directed, reluctantly, by cinematographer Jacques R. Marquette. It is set in the old west, a meteor falls from heaven on a young family, the father is killed, the boy is transformed into a monster – and when he grows up, bearded like the Wolfman, he kills a number of people. He is protected by his mother. Anne Gwynne plays the mother. Gilbert Perkins, an Australian athlete, is the monster. There is a sinister performance by Gloria Castillo as a young woman who turns into a Lady Macbeth type.

The film is brief, basic in its cinematography, average or below in its acting. The horror scenes are not particularly frightening – but the development, where the young girl that the monster abducts turns into a villain is rather more interesting.

The film’s title was changed because of the popularity of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and I Was a Teenage Werewolf which were current at the time.

1.The popularity of this kind of small-budget brief science fiction film of the 50s?

2.Black and white photography, the western sets? Quality of acting? Musical score?

3.The title and sensationalism? Verified?

4.The opening situation, the west, the genial family, the good-heartedness, the mine? The change of fortune, the meteor falling, the death of the father, the reaction of the mother, Charlie and his being transformed?

5.Charlie as the teenage monster, appearance, his killing people? The sheriff and his investigations? The rumours, people frightened? His mother protecting him? Reprimanding him? Charlie and his abduction of Kathy? Her influence on him, twisting his mind, getting him to murder the man who wanted the money from her? Urging him to kill his mother and the sheriff? His hearing her, taking her, throwing her over the cliff?

6.Ruth, devoted mother, protecting her son, in love with the sheriff, finding the gold? Its value? Buying the house, moving to town? Kathy and the abduction, getting her to stay in the house, Kathy blackmailing her? The clashes? Her not marrying the sheriff because of love for her son?

7.The sheriff, his search, the deaths, his courting Ruth, the final confrontation?

8.Kathy, simple girl, the opportunity for money, getting Charlie to kill the boyfriend? Her manipulation of him? Her death?

9.Popular ingredients in the genre of this kind of science fiction?